Hard to believe that was 12 years ago.  The actual events of the day are starting to get a little fuzzy in my memory.   I remember everything up to watching the second tower fall... after that, things are blurry.   I'm pretty sure I wandered around campus aimlessly for a few hours.  A college campus is a strange place to be when a tragedy of those proportions happens.  

Switching gears,  yesterday I decided to make use of our Y membership and go run on the treadmill.   I'd pack a bag, drop the kids off at childwatch, have a nice leisurely workout time, collect my kids and be off!

HA!

It takes 25 minutes for us to get to the Y in traffic (no, we don't go to the Y in the next town over, why would we do something like that?) and 10 minutes into our trip I realized I had forgotten my phone.   That meant no tracking my miles on my Nike + app,  no music to listen to on my run, no method of telling Andrew just how much I hate treadmills... nothing.    I was too far away to turn around so I decided to do what I could and bang out 3 miles anyway.   First crisis averted... kind of.  

We got to the Y,  I check the kids into childwatch and go on my merry way.   At least something would work out for me!

Got on my dreadmill.  Tried to run.  Crippled by pain in my left calf.   Tried to run through the pain.   Almost fell off the treadmill it hurt so badly.   Get off treadmill after 20 minutes and limped over to the foam rollers to try to roll out my muscle.

There the SAHM brigade (what's that?  I'm a SAHM?  Yes, but you know what I mean.   The perfectly tiny and blond ones who have older kids who are in school every day and have hours upon hours to themselves.  I don't like them) glared at me.  I was using one of THEIR mats to do something like USE A FOAM ROLLER ON A MUSCLE!!  Those mats are strictly for tiny blonds to work on their abs,  making sure they don't actually work up a sweat.   Sorry ladies, I don't have the cash for a tummy tuck so my flabby midsection is just going to sweat all over your stupid mats.

Anyway....  at that point I just gave up.   I still had awhile before I had to pick up the kids so I planned on getting changed and sitting in the lobby and playing with my phone until I was forced to retrieve my children.  But I was just getting my stuff out of my locker when someone walked into the locker room saying "Is the Little Guy's mother in here??  Little Guy's mother???"

OH EEEEFFFFFFFFF

Yeah,  he had been having a meltdown for 20 minutes.   They tried to calm him down,  but at this point it was time for him to leave. 

So I forgot my phone,  only ran for 20 minutes before I had to give it up,  got nasty looks for using workout equipment, and then my kid was kicked out of childcare.

What a FABULOUS DAY!!!!

Tomorrow my plan is to make sure the Little Guy is well fed, Tylenoled up (he's teething, don't judge) , well rested and try again.   But I'll just be sitting on my bum watching Baby Girl in her gymnastics lesson.  That's going to be 45 minutes to myself so the entire world better cooperate!

September 12, 2012

One of the "perks" of my current gig is the ability to watch the Today Show for 30 seconds intervals while having my coffee.   Yesterday I turned it on,  made some coffee, and began my day.   My day does not allow me to actually sit and watch it,  but it's on the in the background while I didder about. 

Yesterday, you may remember, was September 11th.

In case you were born yesterday,  September 11th is an important day to pause and remember the nearly 3,000 people who died in the worst attack on US soil in history.

The Today Show, however,  declined to do that.

The showed an interview with THE MOST WORTHLESS PERSON IN THE WORLD Someone Kardashian (I don't know all of their names and don't know which one is which anyway). 

Yes.  The Today Show showed an interview with the person who embodies all that is wrong with our country instead of observing moments of silence to remember all those people who died on September 11th, 2001.

I guess I'm going to have to force myself to watch Good Morning America now.   

Have You Forgotten?

I don't know what to say

I was thinking a lot about this post today. I hiked to the summit of Blue Hills by myself, which gave me a lot of time to think. But, what is there left to say about 9-11?

I was at the Pentagon a little over a week ago and saw for myself where the plane hit. I actually stood in the rebuilt portion of the Pentagon, the tour guide pointed out a window and showed us exactly where the plane came from. Talk about spooky - the twin towers are gone, so you can't look out the windows that the people working there on that day looked out of and imagine seeing what they saw. But you can at the Pentagon, and it's an uncomfortable feeling - though a feeling that I would say is important to have. Someone was staring out that window at one point, knowing they were going to die. I was staring out a newer version of that window knowing that people died.

I've seen Ground Zero when they were still clearing out the debris and the buildings around it were still empty. I've seen it when it was completely cleaned out and was just a hole in the ground. I've seen the Pentagon rebuilt with a lot more security and stared out a window that had a plane fly into it. I've been to memorials, observed moments of silence, listened to the songs, talked to people about it, stared at the radio tower that was on the North Tower (it's at the Newseum now), I wore an American flag pin until it fell off my clothes. What am I supposed to be doing now?

Obviously I will never forget that day. I'll never forget Chris Casey telling me what happened, getting out of class and racing down to the institute, watching people jump out of windows to their deaths, staring up at the sky a few days later when the first commercial flights were allowed to take off again. There's a lot that I won't forget, and I shouldn't forget. There's just not a whole lot more I can say about it. I guess time does heal all wounds, it's just leaving a jagged scar on this one.

Where were you when the world stopped turning?

Does watching clips of the attacks still make you cry? It makes me cry. It might always make me cry. Oddly enough, I don't think I cried that day. I don't think it hit me for a couple of days what actually happened. My memories of that day are still so vivid, I don't think I will ever forget them. I can still remember how blue the sky was that day. I was walking down to the Institute with Chris and he was jabbering the whole time about terrorism and planes and everything else that was going on, and I just kept looking at the sky. It was so so blue - it was a perfect New Hampshire day. And yet it would be forever marred by ugliness. I remember watching the towers fall and wondering how they could possibly fall so neatly, almost like it was folding in on itself. I didn't know they were designed to do so. I remember watching a body fly across the screen - and then having the camera almost violently swing away. That, thankfully, was never replayed again. Which is good, I'm not all about seeing people fall to their death. I wonder if the camera man who accidently captured that moment was sick afterwards. I was almost sick. I remember seeing clips of people sobbing in the streets. I remember trying to think if I knew anyone who worked there. There's a lot I remember, and hopefully never forget.

I pledge allegiance to this flag

If that bothers you well that's too bad

But if you have pride, and your proud to do

Hey, we could use some more like me and you

Where the stars and stripes

And the eagle fly

~ Aaron Tippen

~ We are all Hokies today ~

so as all of my Devoted Readers should have realized by now, I tend to shy away from serious topics. For the most part, my depression over the past few months has been documented (which I have decided stems from from both SAD and being in school) and I like to rant about Deval Patrick, but even those rants are few and far between. But this massacre at Va Tech bothers me (i think it also bothers me when people call it VT or VTech, only because it's always been Va Tech in my house and I don't deal well with change. - but that's my weirdness) to the point where I am going to use some blog space to make my feelings known. I'm not placing any blame on anyone, except for Cho Seung-Hui, may he Rot in Hell. But I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of changes on college campuses in the future, that most likely will take away a lot of the students' personal freedoms. They will be put in place to save the students and faculty from another psychotic killer which is certainly an objective we can all rally behind, but still, the fact remains that because of one seriously twisted and sick individual there are going to be people losing more of their freedom. Will there be a Pre and Post Va Tech world like there is a Pre and Post 9/11 world? Will I be telling my children my own college stores and have to pre-face, "now remember I went to college Pre Va Tech " Will fees for colleges go up like fees on airfare went up so colleges can implement more safety measures? Don't misunderstand me - sometimes we have to go for the greater good, and I don't want another massacre to happen again. If colleges need more safety measures on campus , then so be it. But the more freedoms we give up, the easier it becomes. This kid was sick, and people noticed. He had been legally declared a danger to himself and others. His professors were so freaked out by him, that one of them tutored him individually. He never talked to anyone, never made eye contact with anyone. He raised red flags, and yet this is the result. He has destroyed 33 families and hurt so many others. Why? Because he was sick and twisted. He clearly had no grip on reality. And, even more disturbing, thought of Erik and Dylan as martyrs.

You may notice I there is no clear thesis statement in this post. That's really because I'm still confused. While I don't want any more freedoms that we all enjoy to go out the door, do I ever want this to happen again? no. But what's the trade off? We already live in fear. 9/11 pretty much caused that. How much worse is it going to get before we all just blow each other up? How much hatred is there going to be? People are willing to kill other people, even in this day and age, because they are "infidels" (read: not militant Muslims). That's not normal either and they clearly have no grip on reality. Why are people today so sick in the head? What is causing such a warped view of life? God isn't going to give you 77 Virgins in heaven if you kill someone. God isn't going to too pleased with you when you go on a shooting rampage at your college and murder innocent people. For Christ's sake, the professor that barricaded the door was a Holocaust survivor and THIS IS HOW HE DIES? Yeah, somehow I don't see God or Allah or whatever higher being you believe in looking too kindly on that.

So, I must bring my rambling non-cohesive, almost stream of conscious post to an end, because I have to go back to work now. Maybe I'll clarify later on. Maybe not.